


and the rain tumbles down

by kalypsobean



Category: The Hitcher (1986)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Predestination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 18:33:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20625626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean





	and the rain tumbles down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/gifts).

Sometimes he dreams it never ended. He knows it did, of course; he has the scars that show that, on his body and in his heart, his mind, secretly hidden away where nobody can get to them, not even himself <strike>I am you</strike>. He has that boneweary certainty carved on his hands, the ones that held the gun, that pulled the trigger, even though he's long shed the skin that did that, long since washed away the residue and the dirt and never the feeling of having killed, of taken something that wasn't given, that wasn't his.

He wonders what it felt like, sometimes, when it's dark and he's looking out his only window, seeing half a moon and seven stars, the rest hidden by cloud and ambient light and stone. How would it have been if he hadn't been told to, if he hadn't been so scared <strike>weak</strike> that he'd just done it the first time, and left him for someone to find. How it was when he did it and cast off the weight so effortlessly, so easily, just kept right on until Jim, until he didn't. Couldn't.

Jim did that. 

_I did that._

He gets out on a rainy day; he gets out with $73 and clothes that don't fit him any more, though they sit in all the right places and only hang loosely around his waist, his belt tightened one notch further. It's not hard to get a car; he lies easily now, a product of his life, of his time <strike>it's his voice, not mine, not me</strike>. A flash of cash is worth more than a card and ID and he's driving and it's the same but not; the same endless fields, brown and gold reaching to a blue horizon, open sky, yellow lines, black-grey tar. He notes the colours and the taste of the air and acidic, stinging water that feels like heaven and hell reaching for him from the sky, as if his soul still has a choice where he'll go. He drives into the night, until the brown and grey fade into each other and the rain is a curtain over his future, hiding him from something he's not ready for, the big out there.

The car starts sputtering and he coasts to a stop, the brakes unwilling to cooperate as he steers, almost without resistance, to the right. It's always been luck that <strike>found you</strike> failed him, even before then. He might have expected it, if he hadn't wanted to get away, to reclaim the road and life and everything he never had; the half-smile on the rental clerk's face, the flicker of recognition, the willingness... He would go back, if the car would take him, back across state lines and to that little weedy pimpled...

Lights. He's sprayed as the car spins, casting him in light and shadow and light, and then everything seems to still, as if the world woke up that he was back in it and is inviting him forward. _Beauty._ <strike>Irony.</strike> He starts walking, and the car pulls away, leaving him behind, stranded, I'm here and sinking under the weight of the sky, pushing down on his shoulders. He feels it even in the cab of the truck that does wait for him, though the driver turns up the heat and ignores his shivering, the way he curls his fingers and kneads his knees saving holding the anger back, just how he'd learned to hide it, to bide his time and wait. 

And then he's looking at himself, something like he was, and he's riding in a car with a boy and a girl, and his hand is on the knife he'd smuggled in and out and that was really the only thing that kept him calm <strike>docile, restrained, compliant, weak</strike> and this is the only way it could have been, from the first time he slowed to the time he shot and the cuffs went on soon after. It's the only way it can be, unless it's not.

"I want you to stop me," he wants to say. He can hear the words amid an echo, a tumbling rush in his head that sounds and feels like a waterfall, as if the rain outside is still hitting the back of his neck and the prickle of water running down his back is electricity, the signals that tell his hands and mouth what to do when his brain is like this, outside himself and watching. And the words come, they do, and they keep coming, and he just looks on, waiting for it all to stop.


End file.
